Marilyn Shepherd,
You are absolutely correct. It always seems a shame that respondents on these fora ignore rational facts such as those you present, in favour of spouting their ‘gut feelings’.
There is not one person in either of the two large parties capable or decent enough to govern. Australia has finally got the ‘government’ it deserves. The only hope for surviving the future is a parliament of independents directly accountable to their electorates, who debate rationally until they reach consensus. We do not need either parties or presidential-style prime ministers. We have a speaker of the house to keep debates civil and a good bunch of civil servant ‘experts’ to give representatives advice.

<< Now that the dopes are confessing Kevin's "crimes" they seem to have been non-existent. >>

Hells bells Marilyn Shepherd, how do you come to that conclusion?

A number of things happened after Rudd was elected, that you didn’t mention:

He considerably boosted immigration to a new record high above the already record high level under Howard as soon as he became PM, without mentioning any intent to do so in the election campaign.

He boosted and entrenched the absurd continuous expansion paradigm of ever-continuing population growth and ever-increasing economic growth with increased non-renewable primary resource production and all the other unsustainable activities that go with it, right at the point in our history where we really needed to embrace a paradigm of sustainability.

He blew Howard’s border-protection policies wide apart, which is something I would have thought you’d condemn him for, Marilyn.

You are criticising Gillard for all of the horrible negative consequences of the greatly increased onshore asylum seeker movement ( eg; << Gillard has built more refugee prisons than anyone ever >> ), but you are apparently excusing Rudd of any responsibility!!

Sure, she has stuffed up on this issue, but it was Rudd who dumped Labor, and the whole country, and thousands of desperate people, in this enormous asylum-seeking mess.

Supporting Gillard over Rudd does not imply ignorance of some of the Gillard Government failures.

The only thing fishy going on is the impact of one man's ego and ambition. The idea that Rudd was sitting back waiting to jump in when the polls wavered to save the ALP at the last minute would be one thing, but the reality is he acted to erode her leadership from the beginning. It is understandable to some extent at a personal level considering his loss of the leadership role but what about the future for Labor?

The rest of the party is damned if they do and damned if they don't. In explaining the decision to depose a sitting PM it comes down to behaviour and about getting things done properly (pink batts etc). How do you explain it honestly without looking like character assassination to a public who sees Rudd as the underdog. It is difficult but the truth often is even if it makes you unpopular.

cont/...

I cannot see how the US or Israel relationship differs in any way under Rudd or Gillard. Rudd is good at admonishing publicly eg. China human rights but did he actually do anything - were their sanctions over Tibet? Coal as it turned out was more important. Rudd as I remember (correct me if I am wrong) was to abstain from a vote on Palestine and to expel an Israeli diplomat. The passport affair made that all too easy but it was hypocritical given Australia admitted to forging passports and that Israel and Australia had an agreement to station intelligence agencies in each other's regions. They may look like good symbolic gestures granted but one or two good symbolic acts on their own do not a PM make. Unfortunately governments of all stripes are good at staging but whether there is any long term change is another matter.

One thing I agree, the ALP is solely at fault for installing him as leader to contest the election in 2007 given his reputation.

Nobody is all bad or all good - Rudd or Gillard. But overall if there is no consultation on policy both within and without then it is a dictatorship not a consultative democracy.

The future will be about seeing through the campaigning to the substance and that is not always easy no matter who is in power.